True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation

Schmidt Number: S-5862

On-line since: 31st May, 2010

If we wish
to develop an understanding of spiritual investigation we must
first of all have a clear idea about the different states of
consciousness which it is possible for the human soul to experience.
In his normal life on Earth today man enjoys a well-defined state of
consciousness which is characterized by the fact that he experiences
a clear distinction between waking and sleeping, which, though
not coincident in time, correspond approximately with the
imaginary passage of the Sun round the Earth, that is to say,
with the duration of a single revolution of the Earth on its axis. At
the present time, however, this correspondence has been interrupted
to some extent. If we look back into the not very distant past with
its ordered system of life we find that men worked approximately from
sunrise to sunset and slept from sunset to sunrise.

This ordered
existence has partly broken down today. In fact, I have known men who
have reversed their habits of life; they slept by day and were awake
by night. I have often enquired into the reason for this. The people
concerned who, for the most part, were poets and authors told me that
it couldn't be helped; that sort of thing was inseparable from
literary composition. Yet when I came across them at night I never
found them writing poetry!

Now I wish
to emphasize that for the consciousness of today it is most important
that we are awake during the daytime or for a corresponding period
and that we sleep for a period equivalent to the hours of darkness.
Many things are bound up with this form of consciousness, amongst
them that we attach special value to sense-perceptions; they become
for us the prime reality. Yet when we turn from sense-perceptions to
thoughts we regard them as a pale reflection without the reality of
sense-perceptions.

Nowadays we
regard a chair as a reality. You can set it down on the floor; you
can hear the noise it makes. You know that you can sit on it. But the
thought of the chair is not regarded as real. If you bash a thought
on the head, believing it to be located there, you hear nothing. Nor
do you believe — and rightly so, given the present constitution
of man — that you could sit down on the thought of a chair. You
would be far from pleased if only thoughts of chairs were provided in
this hall!

And many
other things are connected with this experience of
consciousness, a consciousness that is related to the orbital period
of the Sun. Circumstances were different for those whose life-pattern
was ordered and directed by the Mysteries, by the Chaldean Mysteries,
for example, of which I spoke yesterday. Those people lived at a
level of consciousness quite different from that of
today.

Let me
illustrate this difference by a somewhat trivial example. According
to our calendar we reckon 365 days to the year; this is not quite
accurate however. If we continued to reckon 365 days to the year over
the centuries we would eventually get out of step with the Sun. We
should lag behind the positions of the Sun. We therefore intercalate
a day every four years. Thus, over relatively long periods of time we
return approximately to congruency.

How did the
Chaldeans deal with this problem in the very early days? For long
periods they used a reckoning similar to ours, but they arrived at it
in a different way. Because they reckoned 360 days to the year they
were obliged to intercalate a whole month every six years, whereas we
reckon a leap year, with an additional day, every four years. So they
had six years of twelve months each, followed by a year of 13
months.

Modern
scholars have recorded and confirmed these facts. But they are
unaware that this chronological difference is bound up with profound
changes in human consciousness. These Chaldeans who intercalated a
month every six years instead of an extra day every four years, had a
completely different outlook on the world from ourselves. They did
not experience the difference between day and night in the same way.
As I mentioned yesterday, their daytime experience was not as clear
and vivid as ours. If someone with our present-day consciousness
comes into this hall and looks around, he will, of course, see the
people in the audience here in sharply defined outlines, some closer
together, others further apart and so on.

This was not
so amongst those who received their inspiration from the
Chaldean Mysteries. In those days they saw a person sitting, for
example, not as we see him now, for that was rare at that time, but
surrounded by an auric cloud which was part of him. And whilst we, in
our mundane way, see each individual in sharply defined outlines
sitting on his chair and the whole so clear-cut that we can easily
count the number present, the old Chaldeans would have seen each
block of chairs to the right and left of the gangway surrounded by a
kind of auric cloud, drifting like patches of mist — here a
cloud, there a cloud and then darker areas and these darker areas
would have indicated the human beings.

This kind of
visual experience would still have been known in the earliest
Chaldean times, though not in later periods. By day the old Chaldeans
would have seen only the dark areas of this nebulous image. At night
they would have seen something very similar, even in a condition of
sleep, for their sleep was not as deep as ours. It was more
dreamlike. Today, if someone were asleep and you were all sitting
here, he would not see anything of you at all. In olden times this
deep sleep was unknown; men would have seen the visionary form
of the auric cloud to the right and left with the individuals as
points of light within it. Thus the difference in the perception of
conditions by day and by night was not so marked in those times as it
is today. For this reason they were unaware of the difference between
the sunlight during the daytime and its absence at night. They saw
the Sun by day as a luminous sphere surrounded by a magnificent
aura.

They
pictured to themselves the following: — below was the Earth;
everywhere above the Earth, water, and higher still the snows
considered to be the source of the Euphrates. Over all this, they
thought, was the air and in the heights was the Sun, travelling from
East to West and surrounded by a most beautiful aura. Then they
imagined the existence of something like a funnel, as we should call
it today; in the evening the Sun descended into this funnel and
emerged again in the morning.

But they
actually saw the Sun in this funnel. The evening Sun was seen
approximately as follows: a luminous, greenish-blue centre,
surrounded by a reddish-yellow halo. This was the image they had of
the Sun — in the morning the Sun emerged from the funnel,
luminous in the centre and surrounded by a halo. It travelled
across the vault of heaven, slipped into the funnel on the Western
horizon, took on a deeper hue, displayed a halo projecting beyond the
funnel and then was lost to view. People spoke of a funnel or hollow
space because to them the Sun was dark or black. They described
things exactly as they saw them.

And again a
deep impression was made upon them in those early times when they
looked back to the first six or seven years of their childhood and
perceived how, during those years, they were still unmistakably
clothed in that divine element in which they had lived before
incarnation, how, between the seventh and fourteenth year they began
to emerge from the spiritual egg until the process was finally
completed in their twentieth year. It was only at this age that they
really felt themselves to be Earth beings. And then they realized the
more keenly the difference between day and night.

They
observed in themselves periodic changes in development every
six or seven years. This was in accordance with the lunar phases. The
Moon phases of twenty-eight days corresponded with the pattern of
their own life experience of periods of six or seven years. And they
felt that a Moon phase of one month was equivalent, in the life of
man, to a period of twenty-eight years
(4 X 7 years).
This they expressed in the calendar by inserting an intercalary month
every seventh year. In brief, their calculations were based on the Moon,
not the Sun.

Furthermore,
they did not see external nature as we do today, sharply defined and
devoid of spirit. The nature they observed both by day and by night
was permeated by a spiritual aura. Today we have a clear, daylight
consciousness; we see nothing by night. This is shown by the
importance we attribute to the Sun which causes the alternation
of day and night.

In the
Mystery-wisdom of the ancient Chaldeans the emphasis was placed not
on the Sun, but on the Moon, because its phases were a faithful
reflection of their own growth to maturity. They felt themselves to
be differently constituted at each stage — as children, as
youth and as adults — but we no longer experience this today.
On looking back there seemed to be very little difference between the
first and second seven years. Nowadays children are so very clever
that we cannot hit it off with them at all! Special methods of
education will have to be devised in order to cope with them. They
are as clever as grown-ups and everyone seems equally clever,
whatever his age.

It was not
so with the ancient Chaldeans. At that time children were still
linked with the spiritual world; when they grew up they had not
forgotten this relationship and realized that only later had they
become earthly beings, after having emerged from the auric egg. So
their calculations were based not on the Sun but on the Moon,
on the quarterly phases reckoned in periods of seven which they
observed in the heavens. Therefore every seven years they inscribed
an intercalary month, a period calculated according to the lunar
phases.

This outward
sign in the history of civilisations, the fact that we intercalate an
additional day every 4 years, whilst the Chaldeans intercalated an
additional month every 7 years, indicates that in reality, though
their day consciousness was not sharply divided from their
night consciousness, they experienced none the less wide differences
in their states of consciousness during the successive
life-periods.

Today, when
we wake in the morning and rub the sleep out of our eyes, we say:
“I have slept.” The ancient Chaldeans felt that
they awoke in their twenty-first or twenty-second year; then
they began to see the world clearly and said: “I have been
asleep up to this moment.” They believed that they preserved a
waking consciousness up to their fiftieth year and that in old age
they did not revert to their former condition but developed a fuller,
clearer vision. For this reason the old men were looked upon as the
sages, who, with the consciousness acquired since the age of twenty,
now entered the realm of sleep, but remained highly
clairvoyant.

Thus the old
Chaldeans knew three states of consciousness. We experience two, with
the addition of a third which we characterize as a dream condition:
waking, sleeping, dreaming. A Chaldean did not experience these
three conditions from day to day; he experienced a diminished
condition of consciousness up to his twentieth year, then a
consciously waking condition up to his fiftieth year. And then a
condition where it was said of him: he is taking his earthly
consciousness into the spiritual world. He has arrived at the
stage when he knows much more, is wiser than other people.

Those
advanced in years were looked up to as sages; today they are
considered to be in their dotage. This tremendous difference
strikes at the very roots of human existence. We must be quite clear
about this difference for it is enormously important for the being of
man. We do not survey the world simply through a single state of
consciousness. We learn to know the world only when we
understand the form of consciousness which, for example, was common
to the children of ancient Chaldea. It resembled our own dream state,
though it was more active, capable of stimulating the
individual to action. Today it would be considered to be a
pathological condition. This condition of waking consciousness that
we find so prosaic today and take for granted was unknown in those
times. I use the term prosaic advisedly, for to concentrate on the
physical aspects of man and depict them in this guise is prosaic.
This would not be readily admitted, of course, but it is so. In
ancient Chaldea man was perceived both as a physical entity and as
endowed with an aura, as I have described. And the sages saw beyond
the physical into the souls of men.

This was a
third state of consciousness which is extinguished today. It
may be compared to a state of dreamless sleep. If we look at the
situation historically, we find that we encounter states of
consciousness very different from our own, and the further back we
go, the wider are the divergences. By comparison, our normal states
of consciousness today are nothing much to boast of. We set no store
on what a person may experience in dreamless sleep because, as a
rule, he has little to relate. There are few, very few, today who can
tell us anything of their experiences in dreamless sleep. Dream life,
it is said, is fantasy, mere coinage of the brain; the only
desirable, the only reliable state is the condition of waking
consciousness.

The ancient
Chaldeans did not share this attitude. The childlike condition of
consciousness with its fresh and vigorous dream life that invited
positive action, was held to be the condition when children still
lived in a paradisal state, when their utterances proceeded from the
Gods. People listened to them because they had brought a wealth of
information from the spiritual world.

In the
course of time they reached the state of consciousness when
they were Earth beings, but in their auras they were still beings of
soul, spiritual beings. This was the condition of consciousness
enjoyed by the seers or sages. When people listened to them they were
convinced that they were receiving communications from the spiritual
world.

And of those
who rose ever higher in the Mysteries it was said that in their
fiftieth year they transcended the purely solar element and entered
into the spiritual world; from Sun-heroes they became Fathers who
were in communion with the spiritual home of mankind.

Thus, from a
historical perspective, I wished to indicate to you how mankind came
to share these various states of consciousness.

In exploring
the states of consciousness let us set aside for a moment the
dreamless sleep of present-day man and examine the ordinary
waking state with which you are familiar when you say: I am fully
conscious, I see objects around me, hear other people speak to me,
converse with them and so on.

And then let
us take the second condition, known to all of you when you imagine
yourself to be asleep, when dreams arise which are often so
terrifying or so marvellously liberating that you are
constrained to say if you are in a normally healthy state: these
things are not part of ordinary, everyday life; they are a
kaleidoscopic effect created by the play of natural fantasy, and
force their way into man's consciousness in the most varied
ways. The prosaic type will pay little attention to dreams; the
superstitious will interpret them in an external way, the poetically
endowed who is neither matter of fact nor superstitious, is
still aware of this kaleidoscopic life of dreams. For out of
the depths of uncorrupted human nature emerges something which does
not have the significance attributed to it by superstitious people
but which indicates, none the less, that, in sleep, experiences rise
up from the instinctual life like mists or clouds — just as
mountains rise up and after long ages disappear again. Only the
difference is that all this takes place rapidly in dream life, whilst
in the Cosmos dream pictures are slowly built up and slowly
disappear.

Dreams have
another peculiarity. We may dream of snakes all around us, of snakes
entwined round our bodies. Cocaine addicts, for example, will have
this dream-experience of snakes in an exaggerated form. The
victims of this vice feel snakes crawling out of every part of their
body even when they are awake.

When we
observe our own life we realize that such dreams indicate some
internal disturbance. Dreams about snakes point to some digestive
disorder. The peristaltic movements of the intestines are symbolized
in the dream as the writhing of snakes.

Again, a man
may dream he is going for a walk and comes to a place where a white
post stands — a white post or stone pillar which is damaged at
the top. In his dream he feels uneasy about this damaged top. He
wakes up to find he has toothache! Unconsciously he feels the urge to
finger one of his teeth. (I am referring to the present-day man; the
man of ancient times was above such things). The typical man of today
decides to go to the dentist and have the decayed tooth
filled.

What is the
explanation of this? This whole experience associated with a painful
tooth, indicating some organic disturbance, is symbolized in a
picture. The tooth becomes a ‘white post’ that shows
signs of damage or decay. In the dream picture we become aware of
something that is actually situated within our organism.

Or again, we
have a vivid dream that we are in a room where we feel suffocated; we
feel restless and uneasy. Then suddenly — we had not noticed it
before — we catch sight of a stove in the corner which is very
hot. The room was overheated. We now know in the dream why we
could not breathe — the room was too hot. We wake up with
palpitations and a racing pulse. The irregular pulse was
symbolized externally in the dream. There is some malfunctioning of
the organism; we become aware of it, but not immediately, as we would
have done in the daytime. We become aware of it through a symbolic
picture. Or we may dream that there is bright sunshine outside. The
sunlight disturbs us and we become uneasy, though normally we would
welcome the sunshine. We wake up and find a neighbour's house on
fire. An external event is not depicted as such, but is clothed in
symbolic form.

Thus we see
that a natural creative imagination is at work in dreams; external
events are reflected in dreams. But we need not insist upon this. The
dream can, so to speak, come to life and take on its own inner
meaning and essential reality. We may dream of something that cannot
be related to anything in the external world. When that point
is reached in gradual stages, we say that a totally different world
is portrayed in our dreams; we encounter quite other beings,
demoniacal or beautiful and elf-like. It is not only the phenomenal
world that appears in dream pictures, but a wholly different world
invades us. Human beings can dream of the super-sensible world in the
form of images perceptible by the senses.

Thus the
consciousness of man today has a dream life alongside his ordinary
waking life. Indeed, a disposition to dreaming makes us poets. People
who are unable to dream will always be inferior poets. For in order
to be a poet or artist, one must be able to translate the natural
stuff of dreams into the imaginative fantasy of waking
life.

Anyone, for
example, whose dreams draw their symbolism from external
objects, as in the dream where sunshine pouring into a room
symbolized a neighbour's house on fire, will feel next day an urge to
compose. He is a potential musician. He who experiences the
palpitation of the heart as an overheated stove will feel impelled
next day to turn to modelling or architectural design. He is the
potential architect, sculptor or painter.

There is a
connection between these things; in ordinary consciousness they are
associated in the way I have described. But we can go further.
As I have described in my books
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
and
Occult Science — an Outline,
this ordinary
consciousness can be developed by undertaking certain spiritual
exercises — we will speak of them later — so that by
concentrating on certain precise concepts and linguistic
relationships, our whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing
is given added life and vigour. Through these exercises thoughts
become virtually tangible realities and feelings living
entities.

Then begins
the first stage of modern Initiation — we carry over our dreams
into waking life. But at this point misunderstandings may easily
arise. We set little store on the dreams of anyone who quite
naturally indulges in daydreams. But he who, in spite of his
day-dreaming, retains full awareness and yet can go on dreaming
because he has made his feeling and thinking more lively and vigorous
than others, such an individual has taken the first steps towards
becoming an Initiate. When he has reached this stage, the following
takes place. Because he is a sensible person, as sober and sensible
as others in his waking life, he sees his fellow men, on the one
hand, as they appear to normal consciousness, the shape of their
nose, the colour of their eyes, their tidy or untidy hair and so on.
On the other hand, he begins to dream of something else around them,
something true, namely, he dreams their aura, the inner meaning
of their relationships; he begins to see with the eye of the spirit.
In full waking consciousness he begins to have dreams that are
meaningful and in accordance with reality. His dreaming does not
cease when he wakes up in the morning, continues through the day and
is transformed in sleep. But it is fraught with meaning. He sees the
true character of men's souls and the spiritual source of their
actions. He lives in an activity that is otherwise associated with
mere reminiscences or ordinary dreams. But these dreams are a
spiritual reality.

A second
state of consciousness is now added to the first. Waking dreams
become a form of perception higher than the normal perception of
everyday life. In full waking consciousness a higher reality
has been added to the reality of everyday life. In ordinary dreaming
something of reality is lost; it gives us only fragments of reality,
born of fantasy. But in waking dreams, as I have described them, in
which everything stands revealed — the individual human form,
animals and plants, in which the deeds of men are seen to be full of
meaning, thereby revealing their spiritual content — all
this adds something to everyday reality and enriches it.

To the
perception of ordinary consciousness is added a second consciousness.
One begins to see the world in a different light and this is shown
most strikingly when we look at the animal kingdom which now appears
so utterly different that we wonder what we really saw before.
Hitherto we had seen only a part of the animal kingdom, only its
external aspect. Now a whole new world is added. In each animal
species, in lions, tigers and all the various genera lies something
that is akin to man. This is difficult to illustrate by comparison
with a human being. Please try and follow me.

Let us
suppose that you add to your body by tying a string to each finger of
both hands and that to the end of each string at a fixed distance you
attach a ball painted with various coloured patterns. You have now
ten strings. Now manipulate the strings with your fingers so that the
balls are agitated in all directions. Now do the same with your toes.
Now practise leaping in the air and working your toes so skilfully
that a wonderful pattern is created. Thus each finger will have
become longer with a coloured ball at its tip, and every toe the
same.

Imagine that
you can see all this as part of your human form and the whole under
the control of the soul. Each ball is a separate entity, but the
moment you survey it all, you have the impression that it forms a
composite whole. All these balls and strings are not a part of
yourself like your fingers and toes. It all forms a single whole and
you are in command. If you begin to manipulate the balls and strings
in the way I have indicated, then you will see the lion-soul above
and the individual lions attached to it like the balls, the whole
forming a unity. Previously, if you had looked at the twenty balls
lying there they would have represented a world unto themselves. Now
add the human being as an activating agent and you create a new
situation.

The same
applies to your mode of perception. You see the individual lions
moving about independently; they are the balls lying around as
separate units. Then you see the lion-soul endowed with
self-consciousness which, in the spiritual world, resembles a human
being, and the individual lions seemingly suspended like the moving
balls. These individual lions are manifestations of the
self-conscious lion-soul.

Thus you
perceive the higher forms of every creature in the animal kingdom.
Animals have something akin to man in their make-up, a soul quality
which belongs to a different sphere from that of the human soul. As
you go through life you emphatically bear your psychic life with its
self-consciousness wherever you go. You are at liberty to
impose your ego on all and sundry. This the individual lion cannot
do. But another realm exists, bordering on this realm of conflicting
egos. In the spiritual world the lion-souls do precisely the same. To
them the individual lions are so many balls dancing at the end of a
string. Consequently, when we see the true nature of the animal
kingdom with our newly acquired consciousness we get something of a
shock.

We enter a
new world and we say to ourselves: we too belong to this other world,
but we drag it down to Earth. The animal leaves something of itself
behind, its group-soul or species-soul; on Earth we see only the
quadruped. We drag down to Earth what the animal leaves behind in the
spiritual world and acquire in consequence a different bodily form.
That which lives within us belongs also to this higher world, but as
human beings we drag it down to Earth.

Thus we
become acquainted with another world that we are first made aware of
through the medium of animals. But we need an additional form of
consciousness; we must bring our dream-consciousness into our waking
life and then we can gain insight into the inner constitution of the
animal kingdom.

This second
world may be termed the soul-world, the soul-plane or astral plane,
as distinct from the physical world. We become aware of this astral
world through a different form of consciousness. We must familiarize
ourselves with other states of consciousness so that we gain
insight into other worlds which are not the world of our everyday
existence.

It is
possible to strengthen and vitalize the soul-life still further. We
can not only practise concentration and meditation, as
described in the books I have mentioned, we can also strive to expel
again this reinforced soul-content. After the most strenuous
endeavours to fortify the soul-life after strengthening the thinking
and feeling, we reach the point when we are able to modify it again
and finally to nullify it. We are then restored to the state called
the state of “emptied consciousness.”

Now,
normally, a state of emptied consciousness induces sleep. This can be
demonstrated experimentally. First remove all visual impressions so
that the subject is in darkness. Then remove all auditory
impressions so that he is enveloped in silence. Then try to eliminate
all other sense-impressions, and he will gradually fall
asleep.

This cannot
happen if we have first strengthened our thinking and feeling. It
will then be possible to empty our consciousness by an act of will
and still remain awake. Then the phenomenal world will no longer be
present. Our ordinary thoughts and memories are forgotten
— we are in a condition of emptied consciousness and a
real spiritual world at once invades us. Just as our ordinary
consciousness is filled with the colours, sounds and warmth of the
sense-world, so a spiritual world fills this emptied consciousness.
Only when we have consciously emptied our consciousness are we
surrounded by a spiritual world.

Once again
we owe to something in external nature a particularly vivid
apprehension of the new consciousness and its relationship to a
spiritual world. Just as we become aware of the next higher level of
consciousness through our different perception of the animal kingdom,
so we are now able to recognize this new level of consciousness in
the plant kingdom which is entirely differently
constituted.

How does the
plant kingdom appear to normal consciousness? We see the
verdant meadows pied with flowers growing out of the mineral
Earth. We rejoice in the blue and gold, the red and white of the
blossoms and in the living green. We delight in the beauty of the
plant world spread out before us like a carpet. We are filled with
joy and the heart leaps up as we behold the Earth clothed in this
brilliant, multi-coloured garment of flowers and
plants.

Then we lift
our eyes to the dazzling Sun and the blue vault of heaven and see the
familiar clear or cloudy daytime sky. We are not aware of any
connection between the Earth and the heavens, between looking down
upon the flower-decked fields and up at the sky. Let us assume
we have felt intense joy at the sight of this carpet of flowers
spread out before us in the daytime and that we wait through a
summer's day until the fall of night. We now lift our eyes to
the canopy of heaven and see the stars, arrayed in their
manifold shining constellations, spread out across the sky. And
now a new joyous exultation from on high invests our soul.

By day then,
we can look down upon the growing plant-cover of the Earth as
something that fills our heart with inward joy and exultation. We can
then look up at night and see the canopy of heaven that appeared so
blue by day now studded with shining sparkling stars. We rejoice
inwardly at the celestial beauty that is revealed to our soul.
This is the response of our ordinary consciousness.

If we have
perfected the consciousness that is emptied of content and yet
remains awake and that is permeated with the spiritual, we can then
say to ourselves when by day we survey the plant-cover and by night
look up at the glittering stars: Yes, in the daytime the rich hues of
the flower-decked Earth delighted and enchanted me. But what did I
really see? — Then we look up at the starry hosts of heaven. To
the emptied, waking consciousness, the consciousness emptied of all
earthly content, the stars do more than merely shine and sparkle,
they assume the most varied forms, for there, in the higher spheres,
is a wondrous world of quintessential being — everywhere
movement and flux, grand, mighty, sublime. Before this spectacle we
bow our heads in grateful reverence and reverent gratitude,
acknowledging its sublimity. We have reached the mid-stage of
Initiation. We know that the real origin of the plants lies in the
higher spheres. That which, hitherto, we had taken to be nothing more
than the sparkle and glitter of the separate stars, that is the true
being of the plants. It seems as if now for the first time we have
seen the real plant-beings; as if we were seeing only the dewdrops of
the violet bathed in morning dew and not the violet as such. In
looking at the single star we see the single sparkling dewdrop; in
truth, however, a mighty world in flux and movement lies behind. We
now know what the plant-world really is; it is not to be found on
Earth, but out in the Cosmos, grand, mighty and sublime. And all that
we saw by day in the multi-coloured carpet of flowers is the
reflected image of the higher spheres.

And we now
know that the Cosmos, with its flux and movement of real forms and
beings is reflected on the surface of the Earth. When we look
into a mirror, we see ourselves reflected and we know that the
reflection is only of our outer form, not of our soul. The heavens
are not reflected on Earth so definitely, but in such a way that they
are mirrored in the yellow, green, blue, red and white of the plant
colours. They are a reflected image, the faint, shadowy
reflection of the heavens.

We have now
come to know a new world. In the higher spheres are found the
“plant-men,” beings endowed with self-consciousness. And
so, to the phenomenal world and astral world, we can add a third, the
real spiritual world. The stars are the dewdrops of this cosmic world
and the plants are its reflected image. Their appearance is not their
reality; in their manifestation here on Earth they are not even an
entity, but, in relation to the endlessly manifold richness of that
world of transcendence from whence shine forth the separate stars
like dewdrops, simply a reflected Image.

And now we
discover that, as human beings, we bear within us that which is the
real being of the plants in the higher spheres. We bring down into
this mirrored life what the plants leave behind in the world of
spirit, for the plant-beings live in that world and send down
to Earth their reflected images and the Earth fills them with earthly
substance. We men bring our soul-nature, which also belongs to
that higher world, into this world of images. We are not mere images,
but we are also spiritual beings of soul here on Earth. On Earth we
participate in three worlds. We live in the physical world, where the
self-consciousness of animals is not to be found; at the same time we
inhabit the astral world where their self-consciousness exists and
this astral world we bring down into the physical world. We also
inhabit a third world, the spiritual world where dwell the true
plant-beings; but the plant-beings send only their reflected images
down to Earth, whereas we bring down the realities of our
soul-life.

And now we
can say: a being who possesses body, soul and spirit here on Earth is
a human being. A being with body and soul here on Earth, but whose
spirit dwells in a second world bordering on the physical world and
which for that reason has less reality, is an animal. A being with
only a body in the physical world, the soul in the second world and
the spirit in the third world, so that the body is only a reflected
image of the spirit and is filled out with terrestrial matter, is a
plant.

We now have
an understanding of the three worlds in nature and we know that man
bears these three worlds within himself. We feel to some extent the
plants reaching up to the stars. As we look at the plants we say to
ourselves: here is a being which manifests only its reflected image
on Earth, an image detached from its true reality. The more we direct
our gaze to the stars at night, the more do we see its true being in
the higher worlds. When we look from Earth to Heaven and perceive the
Cosmos to be one with the Earth, then we see the world of nature as a
totality.

Then we look
back at ourselves as human beings and say: we have insulated within
our earthly being that element which, in the plants, reaches up to
the heavens. We bear within ourselves the physical, astral and
spiritual worlds.

To develop
clear, objective perception, to follow nature through the different
realms so that we come to know the spiritual world, to gain insight
into man, so that we divine his spiritual essence — this is to
undertake the first steps in spiritual investigation.